Hello writers! It’s another Monday, and here we are at the start of yet another week. If you live in the United States, the past few days have likely been filled with enormous piles of wonderful food and desserts. I’ve had a really lovely holiday weekend with my family. It has been very relaxing to sit back, eat wonderful food, spend time with my loved ones, decorate for Christmas and watch some movies and read some books. I’ve also done a lot of not so fun stuff like cleaning, laundry, and potty-training research for the impending start of that next week. I also got some words in! I was able to work on writing a little bit this weekend, but I did take it a little easier than I normally do because I really wanted to unwind.
With the start of this week, I anticipate having slightly less time to write, but I’m brimming with ideas old and new! I’m excited to be writing whenever I can. I have new story ideas jotted down and am closing in on the last 20K or so words of my book, and it is really exciting to be nearing the end of this draft.
I’m here once again to share some new writing prompts to keep you motivated and writing throughout the week! Writing prompts often save me when I hit that horrible feeling of writer’s block. I don’t like the way it feels, especially when I want to be writing, so I am going to continue to share prompts that I find that sound really interesting or fun to write. I think next week I’m also going to try and create one of my own to share!
1. As I’ve shared before, Pinterest is one of my favorite places to go for writing prompts. This is from Deep Water prompts:
Lost Gods were the worst hitchhikers.
2. A really good resource for writing prompts is pw.org (Poetry and Writers). They post multiple writing prompts every week for fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I’ve chosen one at random for poetry and shortened it just a bit:
In his poem “Magritte Dancing,” Gerald Stern captures the frustration of struggling to fall asleep while paying close attention to the rhythms of his body and passing thoughts. Inspired by the award-winning poet who recently passed, write a poem about falling asleep. Try to combine reality with the surreal as you toe the line between waking and dreaming.
3. From The Practice of Poetry by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell:
Write a poem in which you undertake a journey to an unknown destination. The poem does not necessarily have to have a formal “plot,” but does have to leave you, at the end of the journey, in a wholly unexpected place: either in the midst of a strange landscape (mental and/or physical) or in the throes of a threatening or exciting discovery (self, other, or both).
I think one thing I’ve noticed about prompts is you can use them interchangeably. Poetry prompts can be used for fiction and vice versa. Don’t let the ‘category’ of a prompt stop you from writing what you want.
As you continue on your writing journey, I wonder how it feels to shift from story to story and poem to poem. Do you consider the differences in how writing different stories makes you feel? I definitely have a different mindset when I write poetry versus short fiction versus a novel, and that’s part of the reason I enjoy all of them so much. It lets me push the creative boundaries in my mind until I’ve reached a place of joy or sadness.
I hope everyone’s writing journeys are going well. I find the more time I make for writing, the more ideas I have and the better I feel that I get at it. I hope you are all feeling the same sense of awe when writing, and even if you’re not, that it comes for you soon!
Of Worlds Forgotten 
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